Dog Training Q and A! 3/18/2021: Keeping a dog off furniture, toys you can leave in the crate, using physical pressure during leash walks and more

This is a bonus episode: A recording of a live Q and A.

She also sometimes goes live to answer questions on Clubhouse. Find her there: @anniegrossman.

Join her on Clubhouse tomorrow 3/19 at 12PM ET to give your answer to the question: What is a good dog? Need a Clubhouse invite? Text 917-414-2625.

Today, Annie answered the following questions

Is it considered "positive punishment" if you use body pressure to encourage walking (from @vagabondpaws)

What is the best way to keep your puppy off of furniture? Saying "No" or "Off"? (from @eleniannm)

How do you get a 12-week-old puppy to potty outside (from @eastvillageenzo)

How do you get a puppy to eat her kibble if she only wants to eat treats and people food? (from @heytherepenny)

What are good toys to leave in the crate (from @303lauren)

How can you best train yourself before getting a dog? (from @alinalauranarvaez)

What should you do when a puppy cries overnight, besides taking him out to potty? (from @luvmesumkatie)

Mentioned in this episode

truthaboutpetfood.com

Products

Other episodes mentioned

A Pet Food Killed My Dog (Interview with Sue Thixton of truthaboutpetfood.com)

A Modern Dog Owners Guide To Nipping

A Modern Dog Owners Guide To House Training

Transcript

[Music and intro]

Annie

Hello everyone. Annie here to do our weekly Q and A, if you have a question, go ahead and put it here. I got a bunch of questions in advance that I'm going to share. Hey Michelle, with Baldwin, I loved your takeover this weekend, by the way. Hey Penny. Hey Katie. Nice to see you all here. Lucille, Lucille, you are such a cutie. I'm obsessed with your Instagram. That's Lucille the boodle.

Okay, so first question, came from 303Lauren, said: what are your favorite toys that can be safely in the crate with the dog while human is otherwise engaged? Specifically for puppies. A really great question. Hey Coley.

So I gathered a couple of things here to show you Lauren. And I do usually post these on the podcast. So I'm going to try and be extra descriptive for those who are listening to this and not seeing this. And these are all things that I feel pretty comfortable with leaving in the crate with a dog when you're trying to teach your dog to be happy and alone in her crate, which my dog is doing right now. I'm gonna move the camera. Okay. Hey, can you say hi to everybody? You're being so cute there in your crate, just by yourself.

I might hand these to her while I'm doing this. So first thing is actually just a Himalayan chew. These are made of yak milk. I'm going to give this to her after I show it off, you can have this in your crate my love. They're made of yak milk, or maybe cow milk. They're like super hard cheese. They come in different sizes. This is just the one size we carry.

I like them because they don't tend to chip. And if you give your dog a nice big one like this, I think it's very unlikely that it's going to get to the point that it's going to be so small that your dog is going to swallow it. I mean, maybe if you leave them for a really long time, but I would feel comfortable, especially while I'm home leaving a dog with Himalayan chew also sometimes called a yak chew for at least a little while.

Whereas a bully stick. I might be a little bit more worried the dog would eat it. However, you can put a bully stick in a bully stick holder. This is called the bully grip. I interviewed Vaso, who is the woman who invented this. I interviewed her for the podcast recently. It's just a really cool, simple little toy. You can actually just also use it, you can stuffed peanut butter in the hole or whatever, but the hole is meant for a bully stick.

So you put it in and twist, and it really locks in there. Really hard to get it out. This is me, I'm really pulling it really hard to get out. And so I give these to Poppy all the time in the crate without worrying that she's gonna swallow any bit of the crate, Poppy, this one's coming at you too, it’s your lucky day.

Then there is the Groov, which is a really neat product. It's made by the people who make the Revol crate, which is the crate I tend to recommend more than any others. It's the one that Poppy has. It fits in the Revol crate, but you can put it in other crates too. It's not specifically, it doesn't only go in the Revol. Basically you smear it with peanut butter or wet food or whatever, put it in the crate on the side, twist it. And it literally sits in the crate, so that you don't have to worry about your dog taking it out, chewing it apart, tearing it up, et cetera, et cetera.

It also comes with this cap. So sometimes what I've done is I've taken bone broth and frozen it and put it in here, put the bone broth in the thing, put the cap on and then freeze the whole thing. So then you have like a, basically like a bone broth or peanut butter or whatever lollipop that you can shove in the side, twist it. I think this is really cool thing. And they're about 30 bucks. again, you can get it at our shop online or in the East village.

And the last thing I was going to show you that I think is safe for crates is the Toppl. We recommend the top of all the time at School for the Dogs. So many cool things that you can do with it. It comes in two sizes. I think it's kind of like the modern updated equivalent of a Kong. Easier for a dog to get to the bottom. The Kong, sometimes dogs can't get to the end. Where this has a nice wide open mouth that comes in two different sizes.

And you can actually, I don't know the other size handy, but this is the larger size. You can put the small size on top of the large size to create like a kibble ball that stuff comes out the hole. You can put two of them together and stick a bully stick through it.

But what's nice about using it in a crate. First of all, I mean, I would probably just let Poppy have this alone in the crate without worrying about her destroying it, because it is pretty sturdy. If you have a super chewer dog, you might worry about that. You might want to only watch them with it. West Paw, the company that makes it, they're a Montana based company, they do have a lifetime warranty on all their toys. So if your dog does chew it, you can send it back to them and they will replace it.

But what you can do is just get like a zip tie, and kind of like the Groov, you can just like tie this with a zip tie to the side of your crate. Fill it with wet food, fill it with peanut butter or whatever. And that's another really great way to keep your dog occupied in the crate.

So thank you for that question, Lauren. Always fun to get to show off some of the many, many dog toys I have at home. We're constantly trying to get rid of stuff in our New York City apartment. And there's always negotiations with my husband at what we can and cannot keep. And I always say, you never know when we're going to need all of these dog toys on hand.

Okay. more questions. Let's see if I can add them right from here. Okay. This next question comes from East village Enzo, a new puppy client of ours, I believe at School for the Dogs. Hello, Enzo.

Enzo’s people say, how do I get a 12 week old puppy to potty outside in New York City? He waits for the wee wee pad inside.

Understandable. You know, you might, if you are into podcasts, you might listen to the podcast episode I did about my puppy Poppy and our struggles with getting her to go outside. I think, you know, for one thing I always tell people like, when you have a puppy, the spring, the summer, it's only gonna get easier. It's only gonna get easier for your dog to feel comfortable outside. It's also only going to get easier for your dog to feel comfortable outside as he gets older.

For now, I really wouldn't stress out that much. I would try and get him out as often as you can. Carry him outside so that you're not risking that he's gonna go in the hallway. Put him down, outside somewhere as quiet as possible. You can experiment with different substrates outside. You can try grass. Some dogs like to go on manhole covers, you can try what other, what else is outside? Grates. Give him a chance. Don’t talk them a lot, let them sniff around.

But mostly if you have a 12 week old puppy, I'm more interested in you helping him feel good about being outside than I am and making sure that he's pottying outside. Yes, we do want him to learn to pee and poop outside, and you should be giving him as many opportunities as you can to do that, to do the right thing. And if he does go definitely say yes and give a treat and throw a party.

We have a really good house training guide that you can download at SchoolfortheDogs.com/house on how to put up how to put peeing and pooping on cue among other things. but yeah, I wouldn't sweat it too much. I'm more interested in him just learning to feel good about being outside. And I think often we like stack on all the things that we want from our dogs, right?

Like this dog is three months old, probably just moved to New York City from, I dunno, I'm guessing like rural Pennsylvania. And now we want him to get used to wearing a leash and get used to wearing a collar and get used to wearing a harness and get used to walking on the city streets and do this behavior that leaves an animal kind of vulnerable, right. Peeing and pooping in this public area where there's lots of noises and smells and sounds, et cetera, et cetera. So one thing at a time.

If you have a small dog, I'm not sure how big Enzo is, but I often recommend putting a putting a smaller dog in a bag, getting the dog in the bag outside, just making sure that they're having some good quality time with you outside, where they feel safe. Your dog might not feel safe at this point down on the sidewalk, down on the ground, on the busy streets, you know sometimes I find it's useful when I'm working with clients to remind them that the world looks very different when you're only six inches or a foot off from the ground. Put your head down on the ground, look up, everything's above you. People are coming at you, things are coming at you.

So anyway, that's my, that's my long way of saying don't stress. Give them a lot of opportunities, do reward if he does go outside and make sure to check out our house training guide SchoolfortheDogs.com/house. There's also the podcast episode on house training that I think is mentioned in that guide. Okay.

Next question comes from eleniannm, best way to keep your puppy off the furniture? No, and remove or off and treat.

Don't let your dog on the furniture to begin with. That's my quick and dirty response [laughs]. Behavior is being reinforced all the time. Positive reinforcement is not necessarily something that we are doing to a dog. If your dog goes up on the furniture, your dog is probably enjoying being on the furniture. That behavior is inherently rewarding. If you come up and say no to him, he still got some moments at least of enjoying being on the furniture.

And a big reason why we try and stay away from scolding and that kind of thing is because you don't want your dog to be like, you know, Oh, it's fine when I'm on the furniture, as long as the person's not around. Or, it's fine when I'm on the furniture, but sometimes the person comes into the room and is mad at me, and people are bad. You don't know what -- or maybe your dog is looking at the door knob at the moment that you come in and yell at him. And then he's worried about, you know, door knobs. We don't know what associations the dog is making.

Also, I think, a lot of the time when we are yelling no, or whatever at a dog, the dog is actually like, yay the human's paying attention to me. Like we give them too much credit for actually understanding that we are scolding them.

So, I say arrange the environment in such a way we are not going to get the behavior you don't like, and encourage the likelihood that you are going to get the behavior that you do want. Make sure your dog has a really, really cushy, comfy, comfy, comfy bed near the sofa so that your dog is like, wow, I bet my person wishes they could get into my bed. Put lots of delicious things on the bed.

And when you are out or you don't want the dog to get on the couch, either keep your dog out of that room, make good use of baby gates, use a crate. Or I I've had clients who will put things on the couch to make the couch not accessible to the dog. Put a folding chair, put a ladder sideways on the couch.

Regular podcast listeners might know that my dad's approach to dealing with getting his pets to not go on his bed was he would cover his, his bed with mousetraps, which I don't suggest doing, but that's like an extreme example of how to keep, keep an animal away from your furniture.

And actually just today, an example of this kind of like arranging the environment in order to keep your dog from doing the behaviors you don't want. We picked up all of our rugs when we got Poppy while we were working on house training her. And she mostly goes on a grass patch actually now, and she does really well with it and we thought we might start putting down the rugs again.

But this one rug, this morning, as soon as I put it down, she was like eating every side of the rug, pulling it up, driving me nuts. And so I finally got some weights, and I put a kettlebell and other free weights on each corner of the rug to keep it down. Cause I don't want her to develop this habit of chewing the sides of the rug. And I want chewing the side of the rug to be, which happened this morning, and I'm sure it was positively reinforced because doing it was fun, I just want that behavior to like fade into the background. And in a few days when she forgets it, that was a hobby of hers, I will try lifting up the sides of the rug.

Anyway. I hope that helps. But yeah, you know, I know a lot of these things I see -- Leah just said, I'm so glad George doesn't do that with the rug anymore. A lot of these things are things puppies grow out of. So I think that things do get better.

Vagabond Paws says: is using body pressure to encourage walking positive punishment?

Oh, that's a really good question. Actually, you know, I just did an episode on negative punishment and sort of like the interplay between negative punishment and positive reinforcement. If you think about the negative punishment, positive punishment, positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement on like four parts of a quadrant. The diagonals tend to work in tandem.

So if you're using positive punishment, you're often also using negative reinforcement. And so if you are using body pressure to encourage a dog to walk.. I guess if the pressure is uncomfortable, and that is making your dog move forward, for example, then that would actually being an example of negative reinforcement. Your dog moves in order to make the bad feeling, go away. If something's going away, it's negative. And if you're encouraging the behavior of moving forward, then it is a reinforcement.

But you could also say the pressure, you're adding pressure in order to discourage the behavior of standing still, or whatever. So I would say it could be positive punishment. It could be negative reinforcement. It's probably a little bit of both. And you know, pushing a dog into a position or pulling, it's not my go-to way to teach something like leash walking, or to teach really most things.

Is it going to happen sometimes? I mean, I think we were all guilty of sometimes putting pressure on a leash. Because you're on one side of something, your dog was on the other side of the thing, there's pressure on one side or the other at some point. So I don't think anybody could say that they've never pulled a dog on a leash because it's going to happen whether or not you mean to.

But I would avoid making that your go to way of trying to get your dog to move and instead encourage the behavior of the dog moving. Figure out how you can reinforce the dog for moving, entice the dog to move. So many ways that you can do that. And of course you can use food, you can use treats, you can play, use play.

But non food, non toy motivator that I find works with many dogs is just walking really fast and switching directions a lot. You want to be an exciting person to follow outside. You want your dog to be like, you know, God, I never know where Annie is going to go when we're outside. I really got to pay attention to her. Rather than putting on the brakes or trying to get out ahead of you.

And I also think for most dogs, it can be helpful to keep walks short. And that can seem counterintuitive, especially if you have a dog who's not going a lot outside, which reaches back. I think it was Enzo's question about going outside, keep walks short so that they're not overwhelming. Keep walks short so that if you're trying to get your dog to eliminate, the elimination is more likely to have happened in the beginning of the walk.

Whereas if you are walking outside with your dog for like 30 minutes and then they go, your dog is learning while we go outside for 30 minutes, and then I go. I'd prefer you go in after 10 minutes, five minutes, and then try again, 20 minutes later. The pee will have happened at the same time of day 30 minutes later, but it will have happened when you first go out on your walk. And I guess that doesn't really relate to your question, but it just occurred to me. And I thought I would say it.

Let's see, curly Kathy Sue -- hey there -- says: we're on the waiting list for the Sidewalk Psychos class. Is a list really, really long being that you only accept four dogs at a time?

That's a good question. I am not gonna hop off of this right now to look at the waiting list, but I am happy to do so, if you want to DM us, we can take a look and let you know how long it might be. I would also in the meantime just suggest that you look at maybe some of our virtual classes, we have on-demand classes. And we also have some really good workshops that we are offering on reactive dog stuff. So make sure to keep up with what we're doing on our newsletter, check out the on demand stuff. You can find the on-demand courses at schoolforthedogs.com/courses.

Okay. I think I have time for a couple more questions. I got so many good questions today.

Alinalauranarvaez says: how best to train yourself before getting a dog, especially in preparing for fosters?

Again, I'd say check out our on demand courses, Good Dog Training Course, I think is a really good primer. You can certainly do it before you get a dog. It does not involve a lot of hands-on stuff with a dog, and it's going to give you a really good background.

Yeah, I would say check that out. I'm also happy to,recommend any number of books. You can check out the books that we have in our online store, Puppy Primer we recommend a lot. Perfect Puppy in seven days. I liked the book, Culture Clash and Don't Shoot the Dog. It's just kind of like general overviews for how to think about dog training.

But if you're thinking about training yourself before getting a dog I think you're already ahead of the game, so good for you. yeah. Hope that helps answer that question.

All right. Love me some Katie. I love me some Katie says: what should they do when a puppy cries overnight besides taking him outside to potty?

Hmm. You know, it's a hard question to address in this context because I don't really know the details. However, I can tell you that one reason that a lot of the times dogs cry at night, I've experienced, is we put them in crates like in the other room. And I think that can be very scary for a dog, especially a dog who hasn't spent a lot of time alone yet.

If you are going to use a crate at night which you may or may not choose to do make sure your dog is in a place where your dog can see you. That is a small adjustment that I've seen makes a big difference for a lot of dog owners. that might mean having to put the crate a little bit higher than it might normally be, or it might mean you needing to sleep on the floor. But put the dog in the room with you.

I also find sometimes it can help to like put a dog to bed like you put a kid to bed, put them in the crate or wherever you're going to put them, talk to them, sing a song if you need to, but you know, you can sort of help help the dog settle down. The snuggle puppy is a tool that I often suggest, I think we're not carrying it right now, but if you Google snuggle puppy, you'll find it.

It's basically like just a toy that you can stuff a heating pad into. It comes with heating pads actually. And it comes with this little heart shaped, I don't know what you call it, thingy, that like beats. And you can shove that in this toy as well. And I've seen for some dogs it's made a big difference. Puppies especially are used to sleeping in piles with other puppies. So I think it can like mimic that experience for them of. The old school way of doing it would be like get a hot water bottle and a kitchen timer and a pillow and stuff them all together into a pillow case. And let your dog snuggle up with that.

All right. I think I can answer one more question here. And the other ones I'm going to try and get to, I guess, next week.

Hey there Penny says: how do you get a puppy to eat her kibble if she only wants to eat treats and people food? You know, I'm not a food expert, but I say, trust your puppy. If your dog doesn't want to eat the food, don't make them eat the food. Sometimes they know something that we don't.

Kibble, especially I highly suggest looking at truth about pet food. I think its truthaboutpetfood.com, and pick the kibbles that they recommend. There is so much scary crap in so many dog foods. I have sort of vowed to myself now to only pick foods that are on Sue Thixton's lists. She creates a list every year of the best dog foods. I think it's, I think you can buy it. It's like $10. The food, I've been giving my dog dry food from there, I think it's one that I saw on her recommended lists, by open farms.

One tip, if your dog isn't eating dry food is to get another bag and get a smaller bag. Because although it can seem like the economical thing to do to get like a big Costco size type bag of dog food, it can actually develop like mites and mold and stuff that your dog might be detecting that you're not detecting. But beyond that, you know, try a different brand, see if she likes a different brand.

Or even better go towards something fresh, something in the frozen section of the pet food store. Stella and Chewy's makes these like dehydrated patties that I like to use because you can break them up and give them. You could also try giving, if she's not liking the food that you're giving her in a bowl, you could try giving it to her in training.

So give like, you know, make sort of like a trail mix, 50% treats 50% food, so she doesn't know what the piece is that she's going to get next. You could also put it in a toy. Sometimes I think if dogs are eating food out of a toy or getting food in training, it becomes more like points in a game to them. And they're actually more excited about their food than they would be. My old dog Amos was totally like that. Like he would leave a bowl of kibble, he wouldn't touch his bowl of kibble for hours, but if I started using it in training, it became like a great prize that he absolutely had to have.

All right. I think I'm going to see if I can get one more question in here. Thank you all of you for being here.

Bubster_Westie says: how do I combat major biting teething as a puppy who's nine weeks old. And how long does this stage last?

Oh, you know, we also have a really good guide to teaching dogs to not nip. Hey, Alex, if you're in this room, can you put the link to our guide to not nipping? I forget what it is. I forget what the short link is.

Yeah. You know, puppies are gonna, he's gonna grow out of nipping. Nipping is a totally normal nipping as a totally normal thing for puppies. Actually I do have a podcast episode also on nipping that I suggest you check out that's pretty in depth.

But you know, the major things, if you're dealing with nipping are, first of all, make sure your dog is getting a lot of really good playtime with other dogs. I think that's the number one reason that dogs use their mouths with us inappropriately, is they're hoping that their mouths will turn us into other puppies. They need to be playing with other puppies. That's how they learn to use their mouths. That's how they learn to use their bite pressure appropriately. So make sure that your dog is getting some good play time.

Make sure your dog has some really good things to chew; the Himalayan chew that I showed you before, bully sticks. Again, you know, certain things you're maybe not going to want to leave your dog on attended with. But you can use some of those tools that I showed you before. Work to Eat toys, also a really good way to make sure your dog is using his mouth appropriately. So that they're getting to work out their jaw and their tongue on something other than you.

Beyond that, I really love flirt poles, and really any long tug toy. Actually I have a flirt pole here and I could get it to show you. It's like a big fishing pole. You could even make your own. We do sell these in our online shop. I don't know how puppy people with puppies live without these quite frankly. You could make your own. It's basically PVC pipe, get some bungee cord and tie a thingy to the end of it.

This one has a squeaky toy in it. Poppy is here. Poppy, you want to show how you played with your first pot flirt poles? Oh Yes. Go get it.

Anyway, it's just a really great way to basically play tug and help your dog get some energy out that keeps your hand nice and far away from your dog's mouth. It also, in some ways it's a lot better than throwing a ball or something like that. Cause you don't have to run and get it. It's always attached to the device or, I mean to the stick. A lot of fun training that you could do with a Flirt Pole too. So anyway, go get yourself a flirt pole. If you have a puppy, I seriously, I don't know how people with puppies live without flirt poles. They're just that necessary.

Or like I said, at least a long tug toy, but something that's going to put like a nice amount of distance between your hand and your puppy's mouth. Right Poppy? You got it? You got it? Rrrrrr. Yeah. I know you love it. You love it.

All right. I don't have the short link. Alex do you have that short link to the nipping episode or the guide? You could find it if you just look up School for the Dogs nipping, I think you will find the podcast episode.

Sometimes I'll also just get like a really long bully stick and let a dog chew on the other end of the bully stick. That's a way that your dog can like spend time with you. And also spend time near you, but use the mouth appropriately.

Oh, Hey, diggs pet just joined. I was just showing everybody the Groov, guys. This is made by made by my friends at diggs. I totally love this thing. All right.

I think that's enough questions for today. I actually didn't get to all the questions. But I will answer some more next week. You can also ask the question in advance if you go to SchoolfortheDogs.com/QandA. Oh, the other thing is tomorrow at noon, I'm going to go on clubhouse to ask the question, “what is your definition of a good dog?”

I did an episode a long time ago actually on what is good dog training and talked about what I think good dog training is. And I wanted to do a follow-up to that episode about what a good dog is. And I was gonna go to the dog park and interview people. But we're hard to do that these days in a lockdown land. So I thought clubhouse might be a nice way to do that. so join me on clubhouse tomorrow at noon, I'm there @AnnieGrossman. If you need a clubhouse invite, I have some, happy to share one with you. You can just text me at (917) 414-2625. All right. Thanks for being here. Bye bye.